Which Mouse is Pregnant?

What do you think?

It looks to me like both might be pregnant...the one on the left is pregnant...or just WAY too fat! The one on the right isn't as big, but one side of her body seems to be jutting out farther than the other, which is typical for pregnant mice.

:shrugs: Do YOU know the answer?

The dark brindle looks pregnant but with a small litter, the light brindle looks like the fat deposition that brindle lines get - lots of overall body fat without the abdomen distention that a pregnant one gets. I had horrible reproductive rates in brindle line mice so I would suspect a small litter in any brindle that was pregnant - but just guessing.

mary v.

Yes I know. The mouse on the right is pregnant, only about half way through gestation. The mouse on the left is male.
I have had good luck breeding my brindles, one female consistantly has litter of 20! For some reason, this poor fella has inherited some sort of obesity genetics. He is just getting fatter and fatter. He is fed the same diet as all my other mice (males and females), none of my other males are fat at all. As he gets bigger, it is effecting his ability to breed.
It really is a shame, if feeding him off were an option, I don't think I own a snake big enough! But of course this is the only mouse that is really a pet. Why do the "pets" always have problems? From the moment this guy started to get color, my son fell in love with him. I called him the "palamino" mouse, and my son quickly shortened the name to just "pal". Then poor pal slowly started to get very fat. My husband once pointed to him and said "Whoa is that one gonna blow", I had to tell him it was a boy.
He is the most loving mouse we have had. Very friendly to people, he spends hours grooming his females, and even tries to nurse the babies. (He was raised with out another male in the tank... no male figure??? LOL) As he gets bigger I am worried he will crush them. We are going to the pet store today to try and find him one of those balls where he can run around the room and get some exercise. I bet the cat will love that as well. :grin01: The poor guy can't even scratch the back of his neck anymore, those back legs just don't reach.
So I guess there is a lesson to learn, don't assume all fat people are lazy and eat a lot, just by looking at Pal makes me feel sorry for people who really can't help it.

OMG Carol, that last pic is too funny! I can't believe how big he is

Do you notice any behavioral differences in your brindles?

I purchased a fat brindle back in Dec (had a weak moment and bought the Brindle named "Buddha mouse" and the seal point named "Fat boy") The Seal point is the worst breeder I have ever owned~ but the Brindle was a good breeder~ Unfortunatly he suddenly died in March (I assume he was older when I purchased him as an adult) He was the sweetest mouse~ very calm, would sit right in my hand and just be fat! ~ but his children and grandchildren are NUTS! The craziest mice I've ever owned. It's like opening a tub of wild mice~ they hop, leap and bite EVERYWHERE! They are so crazy I was thinking of culling ALL of them even though they are very cute.

here is a pic of Buddha mouse. Guess I got them in Sept~ as thats what the pics were dated as!

Even though he is tubby, he is a cutie! I found a lot of reproductive and overall health problems, mostly related to obesity in my brindles so abandoned that line of mice. The wild personalities showed up too!!

Love the little Buddah mouse too. I ened up with Siamese and Burmese exclusively in my feeder lines as they were the best breeders and fastest growth rates of any lines of mice I kept. I think it was related to some early outcrossing I did to pink-eyed white lines though - got the good breeding and fast growth from them and was able to get the colorpoint patterns to come back and strengthen after a generation or two. The siamese and burmese are really pretty mice (we had the patterns in our gerbils too!)

mary v.

Thanks! I know he is cute! I haven't had any problems with my brindles at all, breeding wise or temperment wise. I've had good luck with my breeders. Pal is the only "odd" one.
The only mice of mine that were a little wild are my "cow" mice. White/Black or White/Brown spotted ones. I don't know the proper names. But even those finally settled down.

Here is a pic of him when he just started to get overwieght, and a pic of one of my female brindle breeders. She is not fat, she had (keep wanting to say "layed") 20 babies the following day.

LOL

I still think that mouse was smuggling golf balls!

What a cute pic!

Woah..no wonder they're fat..look at the amount of sunflower seed hulls on the floor. It looks like a buncha empty beer cans tossed in the corner.

It's like giving adults nothing but Doritos to eat and a box to live in and then wonder why they're obese.

I'd say that one genetic line is pre-disposed to obesity, which isn't unheard of. And that diet is just pushing it over the top. I like healthy "treats". My mice get Wheaties once a week after getting their cages cleaned out.

I wish I had some brindles. Most of mine are "cow-mice", solids, satins, and a couple long-haired.

Taceas said:

Woah..no wonder they're fat..look at the amount of sunflower seed hulls on the floor. It looks like a buncha empty beer cans tossed in the corner.

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LOL, it looks worse than it is. They are given a small amount of seed mixed in thier food. Obviously, when fed they all go straight for the seeds. But they go a step further... They take them out, go over to that corner and eat them there. If there is a litter present, instead of the hulls being in the corner, they will surround the litter. Personally, it doesn't look comfy to me, but they love to sleep on it. So the build up you see in the pic is about four days worth split between 5 mice at the time. I can't imagine what he'd look like if Pal had eaten all that himself. Pal is being put on an all block diet, no seeds. I'll try wheaties for a treat! Although about once a month I drop a small piece of croissant in their cages, it is the funniest thing to watch them fight over it. Who knew mice were so good at cheating, stealing and fighting. No more of that for Pal though. Poor Pal!

Carol said:

Personally, it doesn't look comfy to me, but they love to sleep on it.

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I dunno...I find my buckwheat hull pillow quite comfy.


I think mice are like cats, they sleep in the most uncomfortable looking places and in the weirdest positions (head shoved up the side of the tub). Not to mention they have the same neurotic behaviour. I've got one female that will empty the entire tub's worth of litter in a week by shoving it through a millimeter sized gap between the top of the tub and the bottom of the food shelf. It's exasperating coming out every morning and finding a pile of soiled litter on the floor and on top of the colonies further down. If she wasn't such a good breeder (20+ every time), I'd have gotten rid of her ages ago. :eek1:

You mean I'm not the only one with obsessive compulsive mice? Thought is was just something in the air at my house.

carol said:

Here is a pic of him when he just started to get overwieght, and a pic of one of my female brindle breeders. She is not fat, she had (keep wanting to say "layed") 20 babies the following day.

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Well oh my god!!! Don't see that everyday. That is a huge mouse. Looks like out old bunny Lola that weighed about 14 lbs before be gave her away because of allergies. She stayed in a 4' by 3' by 3' dog kennel she was so big. Still active though. Oh....Those were the good ol' days

I've had some interesting experiences with obese mice and brindles. In general brindles have the obesity gene, I read a paper that stated the more YELLOW the more predisposed to getting fat. But some lines of brindles are more disposed to fat than others.

I used to keep closer track of which mouse had which babies etc. I've had some incredible lines of brindle mice. I've had some where the dilution genes in addition to the brindle gene has resulted in a "white tiger" look, which is very cool. those were quite pudgy. After a while I found that the mice who were brindle only seemed good for one or two litters before the females got too fat. The males were a lot better, some of my fattest ones were still my best breeders. But finally I stopped wanting brindles in my breeding groups and for the most part eliminated them from the colonies. There were still a few, because I find them pleasing to the eye, but not many. Then I had a shortage of mice and a big "die off" of a bunch of my mice, and I ended up having to use the stock that was leftover. Now I have brindle mice in nearly every cage. BUT one thing that is different is that I don't tend to get obese mice anymore. I do give black oil sunflower seeds as part of their basic meal. I'm pretty much convinced that it is the wild-mouse influence.

When hubby and I bought our new house, it came complete with a little storage shed that hubby gladly converted into a mouse house, complete with air conditioning. My "weaner bin" was usually a very tall sided rubbermaid container, with no lid, that the hoppers and weanlings couldn't get out of. I never expected to discover that the wild mice who fairly quickly infested my "mouse house" would escape INTO the weaner bins. Pretty soon I found that when I pulled a pretty brown mouse from the weaner bin, paired her with a black mouse (should have resulted in black or brown offspring, but NO Agouti/wild-type)... I was getting whole litters of wild-type babies. The wild mice were infiltrating my mouse breeding! While I fed off a disproportionate number of the wild type babies, I think that there were second or third generation hybrid mice that were the offspring of escaped domestic mice and wild mice, so sometimes I would get non-wild-type babies that were still (obviously) with wild mouse heritage. Pretty soon my open topped weaner bin did no good... the young mice started having the ability to jump in and out of the bin... all those wild genes in them. BUT I think that the solid infiltration of wild-type genes into my mouse breeding has resulted in a more slender brindle mouse.

Actually it's very interesting the phenotype of mice I'm getting now. I'm still getting some very large mice with large bold features and huge ears. Some of my male mice are puny... the size and shape of a wild mouse, but tame and docile like a domestic mouse. But the litter size doesn't seem to be affected. I still feed off all wild type mice that appear. And I don't worry any more about the brindle mice being unable to procreate, as they are now just as viable as any of my other mice.

Part of the overweight in brindles comes from the fact that genetically they are A(vy). This gene is very closely related to the lethal yellow gene A. The A are notorious for having a weight problem. With the Brindles the variable (v) factor eliminates the lethalness of the yellow gene. However, in the homozygous form A(vy)A(vy) there is still the tendency towards obesity.

~Jeff C.

Dean, please kill this thread!!!

Aw, Dave.... those pics are of some poor mouse's great great great <snipping a few dozen 'greats'> great grandmother! have some respect!

Yeah, there's GOT to be a way to kill these zombie threads.